The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet: A Novel by David Mitchell Page A

understand. The Dutchman stands in the doorway and makes the shape of an X with his arms and legs. 'Nobody enter! Understand?'
    Hanzaburo nods nervously, as if he must placate a madman.
    Jacob clatters down the stairs, unbolts the door and finds Long Street looking as if an army of British looters just passed through. Shutters lie in pieces, tiles lie in shards, the entire garden wall has collapsed. Dust thickens the air, corroding the sun. On the city's high eastern flank, black smoke billows, and somewhere a woman is wailing out her lungs. The clerk makes his way to the Chief's Residence, but collides with Wybo Gerritszoon at the Crossroads. The hand sways and slurs, 'Bastard French bastards've landed an' the bastards're everywhere!'
    'Mr Gerritszoon: see to the Doorn and the Eik. I'll check the other warehouses.'
    ' You ,' the tattooed strongman spits, ' parleyin' wi' me, Monsewer Jacques? '
    Jacob steps around him and tests the Doorn's door: it is secure.
    Gerritszoon grabs the clerk's throat and roars, 'Get yer filthy French hands off my house an' take yer filthy French fingers off my sister !' He relinquishes his grip in order to hurl a hay-maker: had its aim been true it could have killed Jacob, but instead its force flings Gerritszoon on to the ground. 'French bastards winged me! Winged me!'
    In Flag Square, the muster bell begins to ring.
    'Ig nore that bell!' Vorstenbosch, flanked by Cupido and Philander, paces up Long Street. 'The jackals would line us up like children even as they reef us!' He notices Gerritszoon. 'Is he injured?'
    Jacob rubs his aching throat. 'By grog, I fear, sir.'
    'Leave him be. We must guard ourselves against our protectors.'

    The damage caused by the earthquake is bad but not disastrous. Of the four Dutch-owned warehouses, the Lelie is still under reconstruction following 'Snitker's Fire' and its frame held firm; the doors stayed up on the Doorn; and van Cleef and Jacob were able to guard the damaged Eik against looters until Con Twomey and the Shenandoah 's carpenter, a wraith-like Quebecois, had rehung the thrown-down doors. Captain Lacy reported that whilst they didn't feel the earthquake on board the ship, the noise was as loud as war between God and the Devil. Some tens of crates, moreover, toppled on to the floor in various warehouses: all must be inspected for breakages and spillages. Dozens of roof-tiles must be replaced, new earthenware urns must be procured; the flattened bath-house must be repaired at the Company's expense and the toppled dovecote mended; and the plaster shaken loose from the north wall of Garden House will have to be applied again from scratch. Interpreter Kobayashi reported that the boathouses where the Company sampans are stored collapsed, and quoted what he called 'a superlative price' for repairs. Vorstenbosch shot back, 'Superlative for whom?' and swore not to part with a penning until he and Twomey had inspected the damage themselves. The interpreter left in a state of stony anger. From the Watchtower, Jacob could see that not every ward in Nagasaki escaped as lightly as Dejima: he counted twenty substantial buildings collapsed, and four serious fires pouring smoke into the late August sky.
    * * *

    In Warehouse Eik Jacob and Weh sort through crates of toppled Venetian mirrors: every last glass is to be unwrapped from its straw and recorded as undamaged, cracked or smashed. Hanzaburo curls up on a pile of sacking, and soon he is asleep. For most of the morning, the only sounds are mirrors being lain aside, Weh chewing betel nut, the scratch of Jacob's nib and, over at the Sea-Gate, porters bringing ashore tin and lead. The carpenters who would ordinarily be at work on Warehouse Lelie, across the Weighing Yard, are engaged, Jacob guesses, on more pressing jobs in Nagasaki.
    'Well, it ain't seven years o' bad luck here, Mr de Z., but seven ' undred , eh?'
    Jacob hadn't noticed Arie Grote enter.
    'Quite pard'nable 'twould be, eh, were a cove to lose count an'